


Little Talks

by jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Betty Cooper makes sure he isn't, F/M, Fluff, Jughead Jones is afraid of the future, and still isn't as developed as I'd like it to be, sigh, this prompt got out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: “But we’re not adults?” He feels a bit panicked.“That’s what I told him, but he’s promised to ask me again when we’re older.”The concept of ‘older’ has lost its appeal.





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: 'who initiates talks about the future?', and I don't think I was meant to make it this angsty

They’re six, sitting on the Andrews’ front porch, waiting for Archie to finish his chores and come out to play. 

“Mom came home from the hospital with my new sister,” Jughead says, scuffing his shoe against the concrete steps. He’s not normally one to always fill the silence but he likes talking to Betty - likes it when Betty talks to him - and he feels like this is something she should know.

Her eyes light up, pigtails bouncing as she turns her head towards him. “Really?” He nods. “What’s it like? I wish my mommy would go to the hospital for a baby sister. Then I could play with her just like my dolls,” Betty says wistfully, already subconsciously cradling something in her arms. Jughead thinks about her other question.

“It’s…” Lots of words pass through his head, but none of them seem quite as fitting as, “Loud.”

Betty thinks about this, perusing her rosebud lips together, crinkling her forehead seriously. “Well, I guess babies do cry a lot,” she says finally.

Jughead doesn’t tell her that Forsythia’s crying wasn’t all he meant.

His mom is always tired, forgetting to give him breakfast or turn off the stove before the water boils over. He’s also down to his last pair of clean socks. She doesn’t tuck him in anymore, and Jughead has learnt not to ask for her to read to him like she sometimes used to on days when she didn’t have a double shift.

His sister’s distressed cries are loud, but his father’s voice is louder. He now knows what it sounds like when glass shatters - a bit like the wind chimes hanging from their neighbours’ window but, again, louder. He knows the sound his dad’s fist makes when it comes down on the kitchen counter, the door when it slams, his mom when she cries.

Everything is loud.

“Do you want to have a baby when you’re older?” Betty’s question snaps him out of his reminiscence, the revision of his new knowledge of sounds which, at aged six, go alongside the bark of a dog, ‘duck’ being pronounced with an ‘f’, and the constant rev of a motorcycle engine.

“No,” Jughead answers immediately, his shortness shocking Betty whose lips part. “Babies are gross,” he covers quickly. Betty clucks her tongue at him in a move that makes her look frighteningly like her mother.

“No, they’re not,” she argues, pigtails swinging again. “Besides, when you get married you’ll have to have one, that’s what you do,” she states matter of factly. Jughead can tell that if they were standing up she’d have her hands on her hips.

“I don’t want to get married,” he mumbles sourly, scuffing his sneaker again before thinking better of it, part of the rubber edging falling onto the ground.

Betty regards him as if he’s just grown a second head, like the thought has never even occurred to her before. And he guesses it hasn’t - her mom and dad live in a proper house with proper furniture, proper jobs, and she has a sister, and a fish, and new clothes when she outgrows the old.

“You will,” she says after a moment, and it comes out with such conviction that Jughead thinks he has no reason but to believe her.

“Archie asked me to marry him.” It’s his turn to turn towards her in surprise.

“But we’re not adults?” He feels a bit panicked. Betty rolls her eyes, but it’s different to when his mom does it. There’s a fondness hiding in their sparkling green depths.

“That’s what I told him, but he’s promised to ask me again when we’re older.” The door behind them opens, a blur of red hair flying past them down the steps, Betty’s giggle following it, but Jughead doesn’t move for another moment.

The concept of ‘older’ has lost its appeal.

 

~

 

They’re fourteen and starting high school, sitting cross-legged - Betty on her floral bedspread, Jughead on her cream carpet. 

“Do you think it’ll be alright?” she asks suddenly, looking up from her laptop. He peers out from behind his own, wheezing heavily as the fan works to cool down the old, overheated system, and finds she’s chewing at her lip.

“What?” He doesn’t mean to sound so short. They’ve been given an assignment to write about their summer vacation, a summary of all the places they’ve been, the adventures they’ve had, the things they’ve seen.

Jughead has been to the Twilight Drive-In more times than he can count, weaseling his way inside the projection booth by promising the pimpled seventeen year old that he’d watch the film reels while he took a nap, or went for snacks, or made out with his timid-looking girlfriend in the back of her car.

He’s seen countless places, had more than enough adventures, loved, lost, and loved again, all from one singular spot on a somewhat uncomfortable wooden stool, the light of the screen illuminating his features. He’s spent most of his ‘work’ time over at Betty’s wondering if he could just turn his summer essay into a mass of film reviews.

Betty on the other hand had been on a family trip for a lot of the summer - something that partly contributed to his lack of fun. The Coopers had been travelling along the West Coast, beginning with a visit to Betty’s aunt in LA. He’d received countless pictures of her - at the Space Needle, the Golden Gate Bridge, on the beach with Polly (he reminded himself he’d seen her in a bikini numerous times during their childhood and he definitely wouldn’t admit to anyone that that last one had had his cheeks flaming). She’d returned at the beginning of the week, her skin golden and freckled, her blonde hair sun-bleached, and immediately launched into tales of all the things she’d done while she was away.

“What about you? Have you survived the summer without me?” she teased, pushing at his shoulder jovially.

_ No _ , he wanted to say,  _ I’ve never wanted summer to end faster _ .

Instead he tells her, “Well, Archie was a bit of a handful, but it was alright if I took him out for walks twice a day and made sure to keep him well fed.” She’d laughed at that, a proper, fold-you-in-half laugh, and Jughead had smiled the widest he had in weeks.

“You know,” she begins now, gesturing vaguely to her screen. “High school.” Jughead doesn’t really get what she means.

“Why wouldn’t it be? It’s just school.” He turns back to his screen but he can sense the worry rolling off her in waves and sets his laptop off to the side. “Want to talk about it?”

Her eyes are wide and unseeing, her fists clenched tightly in her lap. She starts when he talks, like she’d expected the conversation to be over. “Oh, um,” Betty mumbles, stretching her fingers out slowly. “I’m just nervous, I guess.”

Jughead doesn’t quite manage to stop the snort that escapes him. “What do you have to be nervous about? You’re Betty Cooper. Your sister’s a cheerleader, and you have one of the highest GPAs in our year, and you’re… blonde,” he finishes, the word  _ beautiful _ feeling like too much of a window into his soul, one that he’s not ready to draw back the curtains on just yet. Her hand shoots up to her ponytail, as if to check. Jughead sighs. “Everything will be fine, Betts.” He smiles at her, just the smallest upturn of his mouth, but it makes some of the tension in her shoulders visibly disappear.

“Alright,” she says back softly, pulling her laptop closer. “Thank you,” she adds a beat later.

“I missed you, Betty,” he confesses after a few minutes gathering his nerve, skin prickling, heart pounding. The smile she sends his way then makes the nauseous feeling in his stomach entirely worth it, bright and unrestrained.

“Me too.”

There’s the sound of a truck door closing, and they both peer towards the open window, blinds fluttering in the warm, steady breeze making its way through the streets.

“It’s Archie’s mom,” she says sadly, being able to see from her vantage point on the bed.

That’s another reason why Jughead is  _ here _ and not over at the Andrews’, enjoying the last few days they have to play video games without the pressing knowledge of homework deadlines. “Guess that’s it then,” he sighs, willing the hot sting out of the corner of his eyes by blinking rapidly.

“I can’t believe she’s moving away. I didn’t ever think Mr and Mrs Andrews would get a divorce,” Betty muses forlornly, now perched on the edge of her mattress, looking down at him.

Jughead’s always thought of divorce as inevitable.

“People outgrow each other,” he shrugs. He does wish it hadn’t been Mary Andrews that had outgrown someone, though. She’d filled an ever increasing void in his day to day life without a word. She’d make sure he had at least one good meal most days, nodding her head towards the array of snacks on the table with a conspirative smile whenever she saw him gazing longingly at the displayed food. She’d wash his clothes before he went home whenever he slept over, slip some money into the pocket of his bag for school lunch, and always open the door to him, no matter how strained her marriage became.

Jughead should have known that something was going to happen, because at this point he’d experienced too much of a good thing.

“Still,” Betty was now saying, the telltale lift of her shoulders informing him that she was going to try and be optimistic. “At least Archie will get to see a lot of Chicago. It’ll be like he’s going on a mini vacation all the time,” she smiles. Jughead nods vaguely.

“Where do you want to live when you’re older?” A silence stretches out between them. Jughead realises he doesn’t have an answer.

He’s spent more time than he will ever admit to anyone thinking about what it’d be like to live outside of Riverdale. He’d find somewhere with a solid wood door, and windows that kept the cold out, a house that couldn’t be pulled away on wheels and had more than five minutes hot running water. He’d live somewhere where he wouldn’t have to wait for the sound of furniture being walked into before he slipped out of his room and unlaced his dad’s shoes, pulling the threadbare blanket from the back of the couch over his drunken limbs, finally able to sleep knowing his dad was home and not sprawled at the side of the road.

He’d live in a house that didn’t occasionally spring memories of the people that left him behind on him - a stray earring, a pink-covered book or abandoned toy - reminders of the ones that have already found somewhere else to live.

But he’d never given a thought as to  _ where _ this mystical, unobtainable place to live would be. Not only because he was convinced he’d never find it, but because ever having the means to get out of Riverdale, leave his dad behind, seemed next to impossible.

“I don’t know,” he tells Betty, meeting her curious gaze. “New York, maybe,” he throws out, finding that the idea doesn’t seem entirely horrid. A big city where he’d be just Jughead, anonymous in a sea of faces.

“That sounds nice, I think I’d like that,” Betty surprises him by saying.

“Yeah?” His lips twitch, fighting a grin.

“Yeah. I could be a journalist for The New York Times,” she announces, laughing at her daydream.

“Maybe we could go together,” he breathes, chest tightening. She softens, still glowing with the rays of sun her skin has soaked up during her time away.

“Maybe we could.”

 

~

 

They’re sixteen and he’s pulling on a leather jacket. 

“Jug?” she murmurs, expression puzzled.

He’d been trying to creep out of the trailer before she could wake up, his walk of shame not because of who he’s walking away from. His shoulders slump in defeat as he turns at the sound of her voice. She’s still rumpled with sleep, perfectly dishevelled and wearing his t-shirt.

“Go back to sleep, it’s still early,” he tries to smile, but it must look like the grimace he feels it to be because she looks disappointed.

“You said you wouldn’t do this anymore. You said one last thing and then you’d be out.” Betty’s voice sounds dangerously close to breaking, and he’s still not fully awake, and his own eyes feel a little watery. He remembers making those promises.

“It’s not as easy as I thought it would be. The Serpents are doing a lot for me, I owe it to them-” Betty cuts him off with a laugh that sounds a bit like a bark. He looks at her in shock.

“You don’t owe them anything! You’re not some kind of replacement for your dad now that he’s gone. You’re not a fill in, carbon copy of their leader just because you’re his son.  _ They _ offered to look out for you if you needed it.” She’s breathing heavily, fists clenched and he aches to reach out and uncurl them before she hurts herself. “Do you need it?” she asks.

Jughead can tell she’s not asking whether he needs them to pay for new notebooks, or his groceries, or sneakers without holes in.

She’s asking if he likes the feeling of running with a gang, the feeling of being needed by a group of people, no matter who they are or what they’re asking him to do. He doesn’t want to lie to her so he says nothing at all.

Betty nods, pulling her lower lip in between her teeth as the first of her tears fall. He thinks this is going to be it when she says, “How long do you need? How long will it be like this?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that either.

She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment before setting him with a steely look that stops his breath. “Jughead, I love you. That hasn’t changed and I don’t think it ever could anymore. But I need you to remember who you are and what you want, because I don’t think it’s this. You said once that I was so much more than my family’s mess, their pressures and expectations. You are more than this now. Don’t let go of who you are because you think the future is one straight, preset path for you. You have options even if you don’t see them yet.”

Somewhere during her speech she’s lifted her hands to cup his cheeks, an action that instantly soothes his raw heart, her touch a cooling balm.

_ “We’re not our parents.” _ He’d said that to her to get her to stop spiraling. She was coming back at him with his own advice now, his own words of affection. “Promise me you’ll think everything through.” He nods, accepting her kiss. “I’m going to go home.”

She’s placed the ball in his court, the  _ come and find me if you decide you want to _ lingering beneath her words.

Jughead steps out of the trailer, breathing in the sweet air of spring. He feels dizzy, not realising he’d been spinning until she’s steadied him. He can’t deny he’d been creeping towards the cliff edge of recklessness recently, relishing in the unrestrained freedom being on the right side of the Serpents gave him. If no one cared enough to parent him, then he wouldn’t act like he was worthy of being parented. 

So what if he had to do a few runs for them. He’d always been background noise, an aid for intimidation mainly, making up the numbers.

But he knows what Betty had been getting at, what she’d been reminding him. Things like this, doing things at the word of others without stopping to think of the consequences first, could catch up to you in the worst way. Especially when you lived on the side of town considered to be off the radar by most of the people in the sheriff’s department.

The border of the town seems to close in around him as he stands on the front steps of the trailer, and he makes his decision.

 

~

 

They’re seventeen and sitting on the worn out couch in his dad’s trailer - his trailer - looking at college brochures. 

“You’re not paying attention,” Betty chides, tapping the side of his head to get his focus back.

“Why would I focus on college brochures when there are far more interesting things to occupy my attention?” he smirks, turning away from the staticy television with a smirk, running his hand up the outside of her thigh until the tips of his fingers slide beneath the hem of her skirt. She slaps at it with a giggle, the laugh turning into a sigh when he squeezes the soft skin.

“Jug,” she breathes on an exhale, tilting her head to give him better access to the spot where he’s mouthing at her neck, peppering kisses and small nips of his teeth, soothing the sting with the flat of his tongue.

During all the times someone has forced him to think about his future, he never thought this current scenario would be part of it. Betty Cooper, reclining beneath him on his couch, eyelashes fluttering as she swallows, tugging at his hair with desperate fingers while he slips his hand beneath her skirt.

There’s a small stab of guilt that pokes at his stomach as his forefinger rubs over the front of her panties, his thumb running higher to circle over that spot that has his favourite sounds leaving her lips.

It’s not the first time she’s tried to broach the topic of colleges with him, and every time he’s found a way to pull the thoughts from her head, leaving her light and floating and entirely unfocused. Jughead feels slightly like he’s tainting one of his favourite activities by using it in this way. Betty moans his name and his own thoughts short out for a moment before she’s smiling dreamily at him and the guilt returns a shade brighter.

“You’re really good at that,” she sighs, boneless and sated. He kisses her for that, and just because he can, tucking her close against his side after she gets back from the bathroom and turning his attention back to the rerun of  _ Jeopardy _ or whatever it is on the screen.

“You still aren’t paying attention.”

_ Crap. _ She’s being more persistent this time.

“Betty, we’re only just about to start senior year. I don’t see why I have to spend the end of my summer thinking about what I’m going to have to be doing in a years time,” he gripes, shuffling uncomfortably on the couch cushions.

“ _ Because _ a year isn’t that long! We’re going to have to start applying really soon, and I want us both to have at least an idea of where we want to go before we go back in the fall,” she insists, and Jughead can feel his blood begin to simmer. He really doesn’t want to get angry with her when she’s only looking out for him, only trying to help. His head feels too full, and his limbs ache, and he suddenly has an intense desire to go to sleep.

“Well, I  _ don’t _ have an idea. I’m not even sure if I’m going to college.” That stops her. She stills beside him, pulling out of his embrace to face him more fully.

“What do you mean you’re not sure? Of course you’re going to college,” she states, but Jughead is already shaking his head, pushing off the couch and facing away from her.

“You don’t know that, Betty,” he huffs in exasperation, feeling that everything he’s been trying to avoid is suddenly coming to a head. “I don’t know that.”

“But, you’re so smart, Jug. And… and you want to write, and get out of Riverdale and experience the world,” she lists enthusiastically, leaning forwards on the edge of her seat. “Listen, we’ve got time to think through this. And I’ll help edit your admissions essays, and ask Mrs Mayweather if she’ll write your reference because I know she’s got a soft spot for you, I just don’t think she’d admit it to your face.” She’s gesturing wildly, a sign Jughead recognises as her being particularly passionate and focused on something.

A distant memory that he’d rather suppress of him telling her he’s not ‘a project’ resurfaces along with the taste of bile and he swallows thickly.

“Betty.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, only half turning towards her. “It’s not about where, or what for, or even if I want to,” he replies woefully. “In case you forgot, my dad is in jail. This is his trailer, and I’m living here without him because he got sent down for a dead man’s crimes. I don’t have any money besides what I’m making at Pop’s, let alone enough for the extortionate fees required to continue on in the system of education.”

“There are scholarships for that, and loans. There are ways for you to do this,” Betty insists, standing up and talking the necessary steps to reach him. He fights to shrug her gentle touch from his shoulder, knowing he’s being cruel taking it out on her. She’s just trying to help, he’s the one who turned their evening upside down.

Something is thumping in Jughead’s head, a constant, thrumming heartbeat that has its source in the back of the coat closet, thick leather and bright embroidery.

His eyes must betray him and look towards the spot because Betty bristles. “You’re waiting for them to call you up, aren’t you?” she whispers, almost gasps, like the last piece of the puzzle has finally emerged from under the table where it had fallen, hiding all this time.

“Sweet Pea said something,” he admits.

“Sweet Pea,” she repeats, her tone accusatory.

“They’re close, Betty. They’re so close to bringing down the Ghoulies once and for all. Think about what this could do for the divide in this town, about how good it could be,” he explains, unable to stop the excited tingle that hums beneath his skin.

“You’re still obsessed with this… this rescue mission for a town that will probably never come together again. Why do you think it’s your responsibility to fix this?” she shouts, taking a step away from him, shaking.

“This is where I come from, Betty, I don’t get to choose!” he fights back, wanting nothing more than to stop yelling at her, to stop this trailer from reliving the soundtrack of his youth, but they’re already here and it’s already happening. “It doesn’t matter how many times someone from the Northside tells me I belong, the fact is that the prejudices in this town are everlasting. I’ll never be accepted as anything other than trailer trash who’s dating a girl who’s too good for him.”

“Don’t you dare,” she shoots back, shaking her head. Her hair is down around her shoulders but he can still see the defiant way her ponytail would swing if it were up. “You don’t get to decide who is and isn’t too good for me, not you,” she seethes. The air in the trailer has become too hot, too cloying, flushing both their cheeks and making him want to scream for some kind of release for the scalding pressure in his chest.

“No, not me,” he says bitterly. “Just everyone. The town, the world, the goddamn laws of the universe.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Betty scoffs.

“I’m just telling the truth!”

“You’re using this as an excuse, Jughead!” Their faces are impossibly close. “Everything is about the ‘rules of Riverdale’ having it out for us, and I’m starting to think that you just want to find a way not to be with me anymore.” Some of the fight has left her voice and she sounds weary.

“I don’t…” he begins, not sure how to finish his sentence. In a way, he supposes he’s always been keeping one eye on an out for them. Not because he wants it - god, he wants anything but - but because he thinks it’s coming for them anyway. And maybe if he’s prepared for it, it won’t hurt so much.

He’s wrong. This is still the most painful thing he’s ever experienced.

“You’re not happy, Betty,” he tells her; it’s not a question. “And I’m the reason why.”

“Well you are right now,” she laughs humorlessly, grabbing her bag and heading towards the door. “You’re fighting a one man war and it isn’t for the North and the South.” With that she’s gone.

 

~

 

They’re twenty and staring at each other across a coffee shop.

“What are you doing here?” Betty blurts out as soon as he says hello.

“Ah,” Jughead rubs at the back of his neck, a nervous tick, not as prepared as he thought he’d be upon seeing her again. “I’m starting my freshman year here.”

“Here?” she repeats, dumbfound.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” 

Betty runs her hands down the front of her apron. The customer behind him clears his throat and he garbles something about a black coffee. She nods, fingertips brushing as he he hands over his change, and Jughead tries not to focus on the sparks that shoot down his arm.

He’s looking down at the book in his hands (first one on his required reading list) when her white Keds step into his peripheral vision. “Hi,” she whispers, glancing over her shoulder towards the other employees in the shop, leaning down to wipe his table in what he assumes is some facade of ‘working’.

“Hi,” he says again.

“How have you been?” she asks quietly, focusing on a invisible spot of dirt on the table.

“Reckless,” he admits truthfully, his eyes downturned and set above deep bags. There’s less tension in his face now, though, less weight of other people’s problems.

“I never liked you reckless,” she replies, so low he almost isn’t sure if he wasn’t supposed to hear it. “So, you’re going to college now?” she asks, louder this time. Jughead nods.

“Thought it was about time I got out of Riverdale. I, err, I sold my manuscript to a publisher. There was a pretty decent advance,” he informs her awkwardly. He’s overcome with conflicting sensations. She’d been the first person he wanted to tell when he’d received the email. Once upon a time she’d read the early draft, looping her arms around his neck as she told him how he deserved to be recognised for his talents, that he was going to get the acclaim he deserved. Only, when the opportunity came - too many years and too many changes too late - she was the one person he couldn’t share it with. Telling her now feels a bit like a consolation prize, not quite what it should have been.

“That’s so great, Juggie,” she praises earnestly, her eyes wide and sincere, clutching the refill jug to her chest. The nickname, coming from her lips instead of Archie’s or Jellybean’s, squeezes his gut in an uncomfortable way that he’s instantly addicted to all over again.

“Thanks,” he says bashfully, throwing in a noncommittal shrug for good measure.

“I always knew you’d have a bright future.” She’s speaking to him so softly, like he’s something delicate, like one wrong word and he’ll shatter and disappear right in front of her. He wants to change that.

“I think you were the only one who always did.”

 

~

 

They’re twenty six and Jughead can’t breathe.

_ “I’m pregnant.” _

The words play over and over again, echoing on repeat, bouncing around Jughead’s skull like they’re looking for a way out.

He’s staring at the spot where Betty told him, sat cross-legged in the middle of their bed, chewing at her lower lip in apprehension as she lay her hands purposefully flat on her bent knees. He’d just come out of their bathroom when, “There’s something I need to tell you,” leaves her lips and sets his heart thudding.

Betty takes a deep breath, the pause allowing him to take in the small nuances of her features that he’s come to know so well over the years. Her brows are bent in careful apprehension, the corner of her lip trapped between her teeth in such a way that betrays her nerves but also her excitement. She’s worried - about his reaction, he guesses. Guilt makes his stomach swoop as he remembers all the times he’s given her reason to be so delicate when telling him things, and he makes sure to rearrange his expression into the most open and accepting one he has, soothing her with a look rather than a touch.

He can see, in the faint glimmer of her eyes, that despite her qualms, whatever it is she’s happy. And if Betty is happy about whatever she’s got to tell him, then he probably will be too.

So when she tells him those two words (one word and a contraction, he clarifies in his mind) he’s already cringing before the word, “Right,” leaves his mouth.

She leans back, the tension leaving her shoulders as her posture turns into somewhat of a dissatisfied slump.

“Um,” she starts, her eyes not quite fixing on him - he thinks she might have focused on the corner of their dresser just right of his shoulder. “Is that all?” Betty asks, her voice small and uncertain. The tremor that permeates it now is no longer a combination of nervousness and anticipation; she sounds as if she’s swallowing back tears.

Jughead feels like an ass. Worse than that, he feels like he should leave the room so she doesn’t have to look at his unresponsive, ineloquent, indelicate self.

But he’s completely frozen, both his tongue and his body. So all Jughead can do is stare at her as she doesn’t quite stare at him, desperately searching his brain for a way to invent time travel within the next two minutes.

He’s not sure how long the silence stretches on, but eventually Betty’s shoulders begin to shake and she clenches her fists, slipping quietly off the bed and out the door behind him.

Now he’s left staring at the ghost of her figure, the depression she’s left in the sheets, the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.

Jughead lowers himself to the mattress on wooden limbs, taking in the last ten minutes of his life, the shift that occurred so sudden and unexpectedly.

He knows that it shouldn’t really be a surprise. It may not have been a thought out, well formulated plan, but it still shouldn’t be a surprise. Despite all the odds, all his mistakes, all the denial of his early years, he and Betty are married, in their own home, with steady incomes and stable financials. They’ve been together through an awful lot and come out the other side, no matter how many barriers were placed in their way.

Jughead’s also aware of the logistics, thanks to a very awkward conversation that began with FP fumbling over his words and eventually throwing a dog-eared book from the Southside’s library at him before leaving the room. And he’s been there for all the times he and Betty have had sex. He knows the percentage failures of birth control.

So, logically, Jughead knows the potential has always been there, and that the next step in the precisely constructed, Alice Cooper approved, game of life plan that they’re supposed to be following, that he never saw himself playing a part in, is children.

He’d known that Betty thought about having children. He’d heard casual remarks about cute young families in restaurants, seen her making faces at babies in their strollers, talking about their family. But nothing had ever seemed so real, so solid, as that one small phrase still hanging in the air of their bedroom.

There’s something too familiar about them, though, and the more Jughead thinks about it, the more his chest tightens, oxygen being forced out of his lungs and not quite making its way back in. 

Everything, for the first time in a long time, is too loud.

He’s once again in the trailer, sitting on the stained carpet of the living room, playing with a broken yellow truck that had come from the secondhand collection box put together for the kids on the Southside. Those words float over to him from the kitchen, light and trembling by the time they reach his ears.

What follows is scary but not unfamiliar. Shattered glass and falling furniture fills the air. His father’s voice is raging, his mother’s high pitched and wailing as she screams back. Can’t afford it, not going to happen, leaving for good are all phrases that rise above him, collecting over their heads in a rolling cloud of fury and despair that forms just beneath the cracked, grey plaster of the ceiling.

Jughead had crawled over to the storage cabinet beneath the kitchen counter and tucked himself inside, one of his few hiding places inside the trailer for when things like this happened, one he could get to now without having to pass his parents mid-match.

He doesn’t come out again until the door to the trailer slams shut, then the door to his parents’ bedroom, and the air has been still for at least one hundred Mississippi’s. He’d called the Andrews’ number on the main phone and Mary had come to get him, not even asking what had happened before she’s buckling him into her car and taking him home.

The sound of the kettle whistling to announce its boiling point atop the stove breaks through Jughead’s reverie. He blinks rapidly, unfocused eyes scanning the room - painted a light, breezy blue - around him. The ceiling above is a clear, clean white, and when he looks down his gaze lands upon the photo frame on the dresser.

Betty smiles back at him, carefree and happy, in a white, gauzy gown. His expression mirrors hers, somewhat more bashful as confetti falls around their embracing bodies. Next to it is Betty’s hairbrush, her bottle of perfume and her makeup. His eyes trace along to the floor where a pair of her discarded panties and his bunched socks are lying close enough to the laundry basket to be considered ‘in the zone’ of being washed. His reading glasses and book are on one of the bedside tables, her tablet and moisturiser on the other.

Everything around him is familiar and calming, signs of a routine, steady life, devoid of screaming matches and threatened walk-outs. He’s already living the life he’d never thought he’s get; it’s already, definitely, his. 

Jughead feels his chin quiver, face crumpling as fast-welling tears make their way down his cheeks, dripping onto his lap. He ducks his head, elbows braced on his knees as he lets the emotions consume him completely, shoulders wracking with barely contained sobs.

“Juggie?” Her whisper has his head snapping up instantly.

Betty is standing behind the door frame, more concealed than normal as if she’s scared the sight of her will send him reeling again. She’s clutching a steaming mug in one hand. “I’m sorry,” Jughead gasps, unable to get the words out quick enough.

Her own face folds as she rushes over to him, setting the mug down on top of their drawers before wrapping her arms around him. “Oh, Jug.”

She runs her fingers through his hair, keeping his face buried in her stomach while his hands clutch at her, wrinkling the soft cotton of her shirt in his desperate hands. “I’m so sorry, Betty,” he chants, like he’s making a promise.

“It’s okay,” she hushes him, her touch soothing and cool. “It was a surprise, and we haven’t even discussed-” Betty stills, angling her lower body away from him like she thinks he won’t want to be close to the cause of his grief.

“No, no, no,” Jughead whispers, drawing her as close as possible, nuzzling against her skin. “I didn’t mean to react like that, I just…” Before, he couldn’t get his mouth to work, now he can’t get it to stop, spilling out his ill-founded fears, his knee-jerk reaction to her confession, before the reality of their situation, as far removed from the one his parents had been in as possible, broke through.

“It’s good, Betty. It’s really good,” he tells her earnestly, because he means it, it’s the only truth there’s ever been. Betty Cooper has supplied him with a future, despite the fact that he’d always shied away from the word. “You’ve already made me realise that while I didn’t want my parents marriage, I still wanted to get married. To you. And now this - I want this.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, still a little skittish. Jughead closes his eyes against her skin as he exhales, wishing that he could end this dance with his childhood that’s flowed into his present. He presses his chapped lips to her abdomen, where their child is now growing, feeling her inhale.

When he looks up, she’s got that look in her eyes again - quiet excitement. Gentle hope.

_ God, she’s beautiful _ . He knows they’ll need to talk about this for the rest of the night, about what his reaction means. But that look is all he wants to think about right now, the fact that she’s still giving it to him twenty years later. That they’re beginning their new future, together.

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”


End file.
